Platform transitions are hard, moving from silicon to silicon or the gw990 to platform. But there's a thing that's harder: moving in SDK to another. Microsoft is due to the middle of an immense transition, outside of more than a few years of Win32 code and its various user experience layers in the direction of modern WinRT and Universal Windows Platform (UWP).

That's an obvious project, with billions of PCs and Windows installations of all versions, obese code that's built using raw Win32, with WinForms, along with WPF. Porting it all to UWP overnight is often an impossible demand when using an industry that's focused on supporting existing line-of-business software with only incremental upgrades. And although Microsoft's Desktop Bridge allows some integration with Windows 10 features, it doesn't bring them back in software written for Windows 7 or exploit new graphical user interface components which happen to have no equivalents in older Windows SDKs.

Increasing the UWP desktop UI

With much associated with the work on delivering the core UWP platform complete, Microsoft is becoming working on options for back-porting its features to older SDKs, with aim of bringing actually calls "modern applications" and desktop applications closer together. Piece of that process could be a new pair of UWP controls that's more desktop focused, in addition to ways of embedding those controls in older code may be overweight new deployment models making it easier to roll out new versions of older applications.

UWP's window layout inherits much with the control design and spacing spacing from tablet-first Windows 8 WinRT. With Windows 10's focus on desktop applications, that's brought about applications with a lot of wasted screen house. What probably worked well in one screen while on an 8-inch tablet doesn't work on a 28-inch monitor, let alone using a 15-inch laptop. As soon as you compare Windows 10's bundled Mail app with Outlook 2016, you see how much information is lost in UWP layouts.

With fall 2018 release of Windows 10 Build 1809, a fresh standard UWP view increases information density by 15 percent. It's not merely a huge change, but enough to a couple more email messages to your Mail list view. And it's not the actual only real option; there's likewise a compact view for UWP controls that will let you add much more information to the screen. You still get access to any or all the touch and pen affordances in less-dense UWP layouts, but in the process you can start to replicate the layouts which possible in older Windows UIs.
Adding UWP components to Win32 applications

Bringing dense layouts to UWP helps with complete application rewrites, but what to get access to UWP features without changing your underlying code? That's and the new XAML Islands feature may come in. It enables you to replace existing WinForms or WPF controls with their UWP equivalents, dropping them directly into existing design surfaces, with access to UWP features. With XAML Islands, you are able to quickly add handwriting features to all your existing code, or profit from Microsoft's new Fluent Design language, quickly updating applications without needing to build major changes to them.

Described at a Build 2018 session as being a possible "Easy button," the UWP XAML for commonly requested controls is wrapped in WPF and WinForms wrappers. There's fallback to older versions, so one binary will still work across Windows 10 and Windows 7 applications; though obviously Windows 7 won't acquire the UI or OS-level features provided to code running on Windows 10.

One bonus that goes along with XAML Islands is that you get access within the new Edge-based WebView control. Mainly because the older IE-based WebView control only gets minimal updates, start to use newer HTML and CSS features as well as more modern JavaScript in your web components. You may take advantage of new form features, like cloud-based Ink Analysis to feature pen support without needing additional code.

Simply by using XAML Islands in current Insider builds of Windows 10, with initial support for WebView. Other controls will follow until the final release sometime in fall 2018.

Because Microsoft is working through its existing open community control toolkit design process, much associated with the work has taken place on GitHub, aided by the opportunity for developers to influence which controls get XAML Islands support.

But don't expect all controls to build XAML Islands support; there's a number of work important to add the ideal wrappers to existing controls, and controls where there's no source control or from long-lost third parties are unlikely to ever inside the shift. Microsoft is promising tools that can assist you wrap your own custom controls, but they're unlikely to arrive until 2019.
New installers for old code

The completed part of this new system of modernizing desktop applications is seen as a new installer model, along with a new ways of deploying .Net itself. Essential aspect on this approach is often a focus on supporting desktop applications in .Net Core 3.0. While the core role for .Net Core remains as the support for UI-less cross-platform applications, its small size and growing roster of support for familiar .Net APIs via .Net Standard means it is an ideal host for independently installed and managed desktop applications.

By bundling .Net Core and any required application code correct single deployment container, there's not even any really should try to worry about maintaining .Net versions of desktop devices: Everything simply had to run an app is using the app. If different apps need different versions on the same library, for anyone who is versioning issues, because each app has its own isolated copy for this library.

Closely related is MSIX, a brand new deployment package, that brings together practically all of Windows's familiar deployment tools, with ability to deploy directly or throughout the Microsoft Store. Existing MSI and .appx packages tends to be converted to the new format, bringing older apps forward. IT pros can manage customizations separately of your application package, allowing it to be easier to deploy new releases and updates merely by adding a common customization pack to each new MSIX. Code can run in isolated containers on Windows 10, building with the .appx isolation mode, hosting both Desktop Bridge-converted code and UWP apps.

Microsoft's history of backward compatability helps hard for it to deliver the huge benefits of major platform upgrades to developers and users. In reality, why should code get upgraded if it'll run on all supported Windows releases?

By providing new roads to both application updates in order to deployment, there's now scope to bring existing code forward along with allow both old and new applications to exercise side by side without conflicts. With this latest round of platform updates, Microsoft would have finally delivered the components was needed to encourage organizations for you to complete their Windows 7 to Windows 10 migrations.